Wednesday, September 14, 2011

At a recent White House tribute concert, Smokey Robinson shared the following insight:

“There are no new words. There are no new chords. And there are no new ideas. In my music, I just try to say, 'I love you,’ as differently as I can.”

How does your brand say I love you?And are you asking your customers to sing that song with you?

THAT’S THE HUMAN REALITY: Service, schmervice – people want to be in love.

You don’t need a focus group to figure that out.

And if that’s too touchy feely for you, too bad.

Companies who see love as a limited resource, as an endangered species, are never going to make it. But if you learn how to bring your heart to their ears, you’ll be around for a long time.

Today we’re going to focus on how your brand can love louder:1. Create an act of love in a moment of friction. The other day I was at a stoplight. Right before it turned green, an old man in a walker dropped his folder. Papers went flying all over the intersection.

Two people hopped out of their cars, picked everything up and walked the guy to the curb. Not a single car moved – even when the light was green.

That was act of love. And I wonder how many micromoments throughout the day your organization could create more of those. Take Southwest Airlines, for example. Most companies use employees as objects to leverage – they treat employees as people to love. And their customers have reached the point where it’s hard not to say I love you.

Matter of fact, Southwest actually has love as their stock symbol. And isn’t it interesting that they’ve been the only profitable airline since the early seventies. Looks like loving louder works. If your employees could give your company a hug, would they run across a field with open arms?

2. Be an expert in memory creation. Love earns you the right to a continued relationship. Love earns you the right to have customers tell your story. And love earns you the right to whisper to those customers on a regular basis. Your challenge is to give regular and unsolicited tokens of love. And I’m not going to bore you with a bunch of examples – that’s the easy.

What matters is that your love implies three things: First, that you’re willing to forego your own convenience. Second, that you’re willing to invest your own time. And third, that you’re willing risk your own security to promote someone else’s satisfaction and development. Do that, and love will not be far behind. Do that, and profit will not be far behind either. How are you rehearsing loving behavior daily?

3. Escort customers. Every day our world becomes less humane in our treatment of each other. In fact, it’s almost scary how many organizations suffer from a severely loveless mentality. Instead of treating people like people, companies treat customer like objects, integers, trophies, categories and commodities.

Retail is the worst. Every time you buy something, you end up standing at the counter thinking: I don’t need a bag. I don’t need a receipt. I don’t need to fill out an online survey for the chance to win a thousand dollars. And I don’t need to sign up for your crappy rewards program so you can spam my inbox with coupons that don’t matter. Just hand me the latte and nobody gets hurt.

If you want to love louder, meet the now need. Instead of treating people’s comments as inconvenient interruptions to the pre-scripted phrases you were forced to memorize in your employee empathy class, trying speaking human. It’s the only language that matters, and the only language guaranteed to be understood by all. Are you famous for the widgets you sell or for the way you love?

4. Be a better mirror. “Mirror, mirror, on the wall – who’s the fairest of them all?” Your customers, that’s who. If you want people to fall in love with you, help them fall in love with themselves first. Give them a front row seat to their own brilliance – and they’ll stick around forever.

The problem is, most people can’t see how smart they really are. They’re just too close themselves. And maybe what they need is a better mirror. If you want to love louder, you need to be that mirror. You need to reflect people’s realities in an affirming, respectful manner. Maybe by taking notes on their ideas right in front of them to make them feel heard, or by linking to their website from your own to make them feel seen.

It’s all about memorializing their impact on your world, then telling everyone about it. That’s the thing about recognition: Isn’t just an interactional gift – it’s an emotional release. If you want to create a world of delight, if you want to establish a memory that sticks in customer’s minds forever, be the mirror they keep coming back to. How are you helping people love themselves more when doing business with you?

REMEMBER: Giving away love changes the kind of person you are as well as the kind of brand you represent.

It’s time turn up the volume of your heart.It’s time to make your brand worth singing about.

Because it’s not who loves you – it’s whose life is better because you love them.

LET ME ASK YA THIS...Are you loving people who do not deserve it?

LET ME SUGGEST THIS...For a list called, "7 Ways to Out Experience the Competition," send an email to me, and you win the list for free!